ARTICLES

These articles offer insights designed to promote discourse about the nature and purpose of our existence. Removing the veils that encumber our deep knowing and unraveling core truths is the essence of this dialogue. The contents of this offering will venture into areas that address the pervasive spiritual hunger in our world, offer avenues for assuaging that ache, and outline steps to take toward psycho-spiritual freedom, authentic sacredness and profound connection. In addition, this offering will ask all of us to examine the beliefs that we have been holding onto and consider that they may actually be holding us back from experiencing our true destiny and a life of significance.

Be Thyself

Several things inspired and prompted me to create The A.L.I.V.E. Workshops®. Firstly, over the portal of the Temple at Delphi was written “Know Thyself”. Then, Oscar Wilde, in a book he wrote in 1891 entitled The Soul of Man Under Socialism stated that, “Over the portal of the antique world is written ‘Know Thyself’; over the portal of the new world, ‘Be Thyself’ shall be written.” That really got to me. I started reflecting upon the fact that we’re incarnate at a time whereby the cycle or cycles during which soulfire was dimmed or extinguished, our divinity denied and our spiritual adulthood forestalled is ending. It is so clear to me that we are currently being heartily invited to co-creatively participate in the emergence of the next cycle by first knowing ourselves and then being our true selves, our authentic selves.

Then, I did a series of self-facilitated vision quests and discovered that not only do we carry in our memory the spiritual labels of having fallen from grace or being separated from Creator Source, but we also carry personal labels and imprints. To my way of seeing it, it’s horrible that the malignant fallout of these spiritual labels and imprints is mirrored in our anemic capacity to faithfully and devotedly love, honor and respect ourselves.

Here’s the thing – we incarnate with this veil that shrouds our conscious knowing and dilutes our desire for self-sourcing, co-creative spiritual freedom. What fascinates me, are the fables that speak of the time in our mother’s wombs when the veil doesn’t exist and during which we remember all the wisdom of the universe. But many of these tales end by narrating that at birth our Guardian Angel gives us a sharp blow that causes us to forget everything we’ve learned! So, somehow we arrive in an incarnational experience unable to remember the truth about our celestial origin and clueless about what we came here to do. In short, we’re programmed to forget, and after eons of forgetting, we believe it is our nature to forget. We forget to the extent that we forget that we’ve forgotten.

In addition to incarnating with a veil, most of us are in the custodial care of parents who have been programmed to forget that their sacred function includes perceiving and upholding their offspring’s soul blueprint, and who therefore can neither call forth our magnificence nor mirror back to us our genius. They, like us, are besieged by never ending shame cycles, engulfed in overwhelm generated from an imbalanced focus on material acquisitions and inundated by the grip of alienation shaped by distorted versions of power and success. As a result their endeavors to manage the immensity of their inherent inadequacy involves assigning labels and projecting imprints onto their susceptible offspring, giving birth to the much-heralded concept that “our genius is in our wound” - clearly a bone-chilling axiom of the old paradigm. This is, of course, is replicated by those who educate us and so on.

Understandably, we tend to want someone to whom we can assign blame or culpability and most people blame their past, their parents, life in general or God. Sometimes, we’re even encouraged to do this by friends and family. We settle for the status quo because we lack a clearly potent way of recognizing who we really are. So how then can we get busy emerging or becoming who we are destined to become? How do we be our true selves when our soulfire is dimmed and key aspects of our essence lie buried beneath the rubble of far too many insidious labels and imprints?

The communion of sharing, stories, poems, processes, initiations, rituals and ceremonies that take place as part of the A.L.I.V.E. Workshops® are specifically designed to assist participants in disengaging not only from the numbing influence of historical spiritual beliefs and assumptions but also from the personal labels and imprints that dim the dazzling truth of who we are and why we are here so that the fire in your soul can be reignited and your essence reclaimed and embodied.

These workshopsare a response to my deep inner knowing that it’s time for us to rise from the ashes of self-denial, self-doubt, self-derision, self-loathing and self-condemnation and to fortify our capacity to not only know ourselves, but to be ourselves in such a way that we faithfully and devotedly love, honor and respect ourselves. It is time to answer the call of our soul. It is time to feast upon authentic sacredness and profound connection with our selves and each other.

Truth Is What The Darkness Most Fears - Part Three

Facing Our Own Soul

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.” ~Carl Jung

Shortly after posting part one of TRUTH IS WHAT THE DARKNESS MOST FEARS, a friend, whom I consider part of my inner circle sacred counsel, asked if I was concerned that my outreach via a three-part opinion article might be viewed as opportunistic. In addition, although I’ve received numerous encouraging and supportive responses to part one, I also received two challenging comments. One individual objected to the recommendation portion in Part One, feeling that it smacked of sentencing. Another individual referred to me as an “…arrogant, self-righteous creature proclaiming to be Mr. Ray’s judge, jury and confessor”, urging readers to “beware of people that insist they know what is best for [the] healing of others.” As synchronicity would have it, my reply to all three individuals is not only in keeping with the theme of this part of the opinion article series, but also a honing for my own process of self-introspection and free self-expression.

Truth is What The Darkness Most Fears - Part Two

Answering The Call

The information referenced in these articles regarding the events of the Sedona Sweat Lodge tragedy facilitated by James Arthur Ray on October 8th is based on what I’ve gleaned from print and radio sources and personal interviews. I leave it to homicide investigators to discover more of the full truth and levy appropriate consequences and to civil attorneys to obtain fair compensation for damages. I am taking this opportunity to address important issues that resonate for me personally and are, in my opinion, “online” for us as members of the human family. In this pivotal and auspicious time, we are presented with repeated opportunities for rapid spiritual awakening. Part of that awakening includes having hearts to feel and the courage to speak up about disturbing and objectionable things appearing on the societal stage. My intent is to apply the inquires and lessons arising from the events surrounding Mr. Ray to the larger arena of the entire spiritual movement. Consequently, it would be irresponsible of me not to acknowledge Mr. Ray as a catalyst for the concerns and inquiries addressed in this part of the opinion article series.

Truth Is What the Darkness Most Fears - Part One

“Playing Full On” Is Linked To Valor

(An invitation to James Arthur Ray and those impacted by the events of October 8th, 2009)

At the outset of this series of articles, offered in three parts, I feel compelled to acknowledge that although I have followed the events of and related to James Arthur Ray’s Spiritual Warrior retreat in Sedona, Arizona on October 8th (which left three people dead and more than 20 ill), I do not know James Ray and have never attended any of his seminars or retreats. However, as a member of the human family I have been unalterably impacted by the events of October 8th